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It was not so long ago that music played at a funeral would be sedate, reflective and sombre, perhaps a hymn or two and a soothing piece of classical music. Times have changed. Nowadays, rather than pews full of lowered heads as Debussy’s Clair de lune raises the odd tear, it’s quite possible the send-off for the departed may involve Eric Idle advising us to Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, from Monty Python’s thoroughly irreligious Life of Brian.

Such changes are reflected in one of the more curious music charts in existence, the Co-operative Funeralcare’s Top 30 of music played at funerals. It consists largely of emotive, often uplifting ballads such as Bette Midler singing Wind Beneath My Wings; Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli’s Time To Say Goodbye; and Robbie Williams’s Angels. As Wayne Hector, the successful songwriter behind hits for everyone from JLS to Susan Boyle, explains of his own Top 30 entry, Westlife’s Flying Without Wings, “At a funeral you want a certain amount of joy, a song about hope rather than a sad song. As much as you’re lamenting someone’s passing, you’re celebrating their life. Songs such as this talk to the aspects that connect all humans.”

The list is only produced every two or three years so it takes a while for new songs to make an appearance. Right now, however, there’s one song that’s shooting up the chart, Jenn Bostic’s Jealous of the Angels.

“It’s comfortably the most requested new song at funerals,” says Co-operative operations director David Collingwood. “It’s massively up-and-coming in our chart.”

The song has a tragic back story that makes this appropriate. Twenty-seven-year-old Bostic is a singer-songwriter based in Nashville, Tennessee. At the age of 10 she was in the back seat of the family car with her older brother when, a couple of miles from their home on an everyday school run, an accident occurred and her father was killed at the wheel. Bostic channelled her grief into writing songs at the family piano – her father was a music fan who’d encouraged her to listen to Emmylou Harris and Bonnie Raitt – but it was only when she was in her twenties that she felt ready to tackle his death in song.

The ballad Jealous of the Angels, which opens with the lines, “I didn’t know today would be our last/Or that I’d have to say goodbye to you so fast”, was the result. Uploaded to YouTube in the middle of last year, it connected immediately with those who had suffered loss, chalking up well over a million viewings. Then Simon Bates championed it on Smooth Radio. Suddenly Bostic was inundated with emails from Britain. More than simply being fans, these were people who wanted to share similar experiences.

“I welcome the role of counsellor,” says Bostic. “I spend a lot of time on social media and it’s an honour that people tell me their personal stories, so it’s also important to answer back. I’m continually overwhelmed that my dad lives on through this song. I played it at the Grand Ole Opry the other night and 4,000 people were on their feet afterwards. Seeing the way it’s been touching people, I now feel there’s a responsibility.”

There’s also a place for humour at funerals. “Last year a former schoolmistress passed away,” recollects Collingwood. “She had devoted her life to a public school but wasn’t very popular with the pupils. One piece of music she chose for her funeral was Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead [from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz]. That showed a person with a sense of humour who wanted to make a statement at the very end that was relevant to their life.”

Such a sense of projected individuality is the key to Frank Sinatra’s perennial place at the top of this chart with My Way. But the artist who appears the most, with three entries in the Top 30, has more in common with Bostic, as an acoustic balladeer with a tragic back story. Eva Cassidy, the American singer who died of cancer in 1996 aged only 33, will forever be associated with her premature demise, a fact that undoubtedly feeds into her popularity at funerals.

Like Bostic, she was championed by a popular easy listening DJ, in her case Terry Wogan. “There’s a fragility and vulnerability in Eva’s singing, a direct emotional expression,” says Tom Norrell of Blix Street Records, Cassidy’s label. “Over the Rainbow is very ethereal – you could even argue it’s about the journey to heaven. Eva’s music is bittersweet, adored around the world only after she died. She performed What a Wonderful World at her own tribute concert only a few days before she passed away. What could be more bittersweet than that?”

Jenn Bostic seems to understand that her own emotional connection to her audience is similarly personal. She thinks it likely that those who discover her will stick with her rather than expect further music of mourning.

“There are happy love songs in my catalogue,” she says, “but as a new artist it doesn’t worry me that fans are relating to this one song, because they’re connecting with me personally. I wish I’d written the song in time to play it at my dad’s funeral. I didn’t – I was too young – but I have so many emails telling me that’s where people initially heard it – at a funeral. If someone gains comfort and healing through it, well, that’s why I’m doing this.”